Covid A teenager wakes up from an 11-month coma unaware of the pandemic
Adolfo Suárez
was the Prime Minister, the
Constitution
had just come into force and negotiations for Spain's accession to the European Economic Community began.
The SMI reached
20,700 pesetas
per month and the
Ford Fiesta
managed to break SEAT's hegemony, becoming the best-selling car of the year.
The
Real Madrid
retained the league title with Sporting Gijon to four points, and the top scorer was won by
the Austrian Krankl, signing for the club he scored more than six goals
Quini
.
On the radio,
Bee Gees, Camilo Sesto and Ana Belén were playing
, in the highest positions of
Los 40 Principales
, which moved away from the original program and inaugurated its first exclusive stations.
In a quick summary,
this was Spain in 1979
, the year
Manel Monteagudo
suffered an accident that left him in a vegetative state for 35 years.
Manel started working as a sailor when he was only 14 years old.
First in southern Africa, then in the Spanish Merchant Marine and at the age of 17 he moved to Germany in search of better economic conditions.
Enlisted in a German merchant ship that left Bremen, near Basra (Iraq),
Manel rushed from a height of six meters
, hitting his head and falling into a coma.
It was February 28, 1979, the day he was 23 years old
.
During the first months he stayed in a
hospital in Iraq
, then he spent a few years in a hospital in Coruña and finally they took him home, where he
was cared for by his then girlfriend and his current wife, Conchi
, for most of the years that he was "asleep".
He explains that, according to the doctors, "the clot I had in my head, which I still have, could not be removed, it was in a very bad place."
"
They told my wife that any day when she woke up I would find myself cold
. Nothing else. My path was to the cemetery. They told my wife to assume that she was dead while she was alive," he said in an interview in
La hora de la 1
.
Manel would not open his eyes again until October 15, 2014, 35 years later
.
"My first impression is that the accident was the day before, that I was in a hospital, but in Basra. At no time was I aware that I was in Spain, I thought it was the day after the accident," he explains that they were his first impressions upon awakening.
At his side, as for so many years, was Conchi.
"For me she was my girlfriend, I'm not aware that she was already my wife.
As soon as I saw her face, I recognized her.
What didn't fit me at all was her hair, because she had a lot of gray hair," recalls Manel.
However, he could not express himself in words, he could not ask his wife anything.
After so long in his state, he had to go through rehabilitation to be able to speak again.
Manel Monteagudo, in the 70s and today.RTVE
Seeing his reflection was also one of the biggest challenges
, and one of the biggest reality shocks he suffered. "I don't know what a 'Everything at 100' is, but my wife told me that she had bought a mirror with a handle in an 'Everything at 100', because she was convinced at all times that I was going to wake up. He put the mirror in front of me and I told him:
'No, this is not me, this is an old man, I am 22 years old'
".
The leap into the future that Manel has lived - as he explains, "I fell asleep at 22 and woke up at 58" - has not been easy.
Society, technology, medicine, communication, the people he knew ... everything around him had changed
. A few days after waking up, he experienced the birth of his granddaughter, when he had not even realized that his daughters were already older.
"I do not regret anything at all, because since I do not remember anything ... The only thing I regret is the death of my father, when I woke up he had already died, that was very shocking for me, it made me very sad," says Manel, who after an arduous rehabilitation process, to this day he enjoys his family and literature and has explained his case in
La hora de la 1
,
Telemadrid
and
COPE
.
"
I've never seen anything like it," he
says about the possibility of connecting by video call from his home computer, "it's fiction."
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Spain
Iraq
Camilo Sesto
Germany
Africa
Sporting de Gijón
Real Madrid
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